Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity towards Politics: The Perspectives of British Citizens
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321715607511 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Editors’ Choice |
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(1) 4 –23
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321715607511
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Understanding and
Challenging Populist
Negativity towards
Politics: The Perspectives
of British Citizens
Gerry Stoker1,2 and Colin Hay3
Abstract
This article adapts and develops the idea of a cynical or ‘stealth’ understanding of politics to
explore how citizens’ estrangement from formal politics is processed cognitively through a
populist lens. Earlier work has shown the widespread presence of stealth attitudes in the United
States and Finland. We show that stealth attitudes are also well established in Britain, demonstrate
their populist character and reveal that age, newspaper readership and concerns about governing
practices help predict their adoption by individuals. Yet our survey findings also reveal a larger
body of positive attitudes towards the practice of democracy suggesting that there is scope for
challenging populist cynicism. We explore these so-called ‘sunshine’ attitudes and connect them to
the reform options favoured by British citizens. If we are to challenge populist negativity towards
politics, we conclude that improving the operation of representative politics is more important
than offering citizens new forms of more deliberative participation.
Keywords
populism, democracy, citizens
Accepted: 5 August 2015
Introduction
Evidence of mounting negativity towards politics in established democracies predates the
economic downturn prompted by the global financial crisis – and it is likely to prove
more enduring (Dalton, 2004; Hay, 2007; Norris, 2011; Pharr and Putnam, 2000; Stoker,
1IGPA, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia
2School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
3Centre d’études européennes, Sciences Po, Paris, France
Corresponding author:
Gerry Stoker, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, University Rd, Southampton SO17
1BJ, UK.
Email: G.Stoker@soton.ac.uk
607511PSX0010.1177/0032321715607511Political StudiesStoker and Hay
research-article2016
Editors’ Choice
Stoker and Hay 5
2006; Torcal and Montero, 2006). To contribute meaningfully to the debate about disen-
chantment with the practice of politics and what might be done to alleviate it, political
scientists need to provide answers to three questions: What is the form and structure of
popular disenchantment? What is the extent of the stranglehold that it now exerts on the
body politic? And what reform mechanisms might help to promote a more positive
engagement with politics by citizens?
Drawing on evidence from the United Kingdom set in a broader comparative context,
this article tries to answer all three questions. We use established, yet innovative, survey
measures tested in several countries to explore what British citizens think about politics
and how it should work. We add additional evidence from focus groups in which citizens
were given the opportunity to explore and propose reform measures that might improve
politics, and we test those ideas in the context of a wider and more representative sample
of British citizens.
In answer to the first question, we argue that the expression of what irks many citizens
about politics takes a modern populist form that we label ‘stealth populism’. We draw
on the idea of stealth democracy originally proposed by John Hibbing and Elizabeth
Theiss-Morse (2002) but reframe the understanding of stealth attitudes. These we see less
as the expression of a commitment to a particular and preferred vision of democracy and
more as an expression of populist angst about the current practice of politics. Stealth
populists think that in a democracy, the political system should deliver what the people
want without them having to pay continual attention to it. From such a perspective, the
perceived failings of the current political system are a simple product of too much poli-
ticking. Politicians talk rather than act, make too many compromises to special interests
and do not have sufficient cognisance of expertise to come to sensible decisions. Both the
construction of expressed negativity towards politics and its drivers support our argument
that stealth populism is a perspective with a populist character and origins.
Our response to the second question about the depth of stealth populism is to argue that
its grip is strong, but far from unbreakable. Public attitudes towards institutions such as
the political system, which are rarely at the forefront of their attention, are always layered,
regularly ambivalent and sometimes loosely formed. In particular, although citizens may
well hold stealth values, they typically do so alongside other more positive views about
the operation of democratic politics and the potential role they might have in it (Neblo
et al., 2010a). Our empirical evidence confirms the presence of these more positive under-
standings. We label them, following the work of Neblo et al. (2010a), ‘sunshine’ views of
democratic politics. Their presence indicates an enduring capacity of citizens to see poli-
tics as operating in a manner close to long-established and familiar principles of liberal
representative democracy. But, in contrast to Michael Neblo et al. and Hibbing and Theiss-
Morse, we do not see ‘stealth’ and ‘sunshine’ views as mutually exclusive, such that evi-
dence of one might disconfirm the presence of the other. Rather, we see them as alternative
understandings (pre-formed vernaculars, in effect) in and through which citizens make
sense of different (and/or ambivalent) political cues (and which are typically triggered by
those cues). Citizens, we suggest, have the capacity to view the politics they witness in
more optimistic or more pessimistic terms. The key question is how our politics might be
reformed so as more consistently to trigger or cue their more optimistic disposition (or,
indeed, to lead them to resolve the ambiguity or ambivalence inherent in many political
cues in a more forgiving way).
The final contribution of the article tackles this directly, by considering what might be
done to reform our politics. What kind of political reforms would incline citizens more to
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